O Presidente da República

CHALLENGES OF BUILDING A NEW NATION IN A MODERN WORLD
H.E. President Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão
on UNIDO General Conference – 10th Session

Vienna, 1st December, 2003

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, allow me to express my profound gratitude to the UNIDO Director General, Carlos Magariños, for the invitation to come to this beautiful city, with its long and proud history.

It is a great pleasure and honour to have the opportunity to share this Conference with other dignitaries and with such a distinguished audience.

We came here to listen and to learn, for today, in Timor-Leste, we are all in the on-the-job training phase.

We came to learn and to look beyond ourselves, to other spaces in other continents, so as to get to know ourselves better.

We came to listen to UNIDO, in order to gain wider perspectives that may benefit Timor-Leste.

Timor-Leste has just become an independent country and enjoyed its reinsertion into the society of nations eighteen months ago. I am proud to say that we joined UNIDO in July this year.

During this first year of independence, Timor-Leste has established its main Institutions namely the Government, the National Parliament, the Presidency and the Judiciary. Timor-Leste has just taken its first steps and has revealed its strong will to invent its own future, to establish a truly democratic system. Democracy itself is a process, it is the respect for ourselves, respect for others and, therefore, for the collective interest and for the dignity of all.

Since it is a process, there is still a long way to go. We still have a difficult task of breaking with the past, changing mentality and the culture of violence as a direct consequence of a long foreign domination. We still have to change the values, attitudes and behaviour of the past. Therefore, only by reconstructing we can demolish the culture of violence and give space to a new culture, a culture of tolerance, of understanding, of forgiveness and of living side by side peacefully.

In building a democratic system, we are encouraging both the representative and participatory systems. As an indispensable complement to the representative system, we keep on encouraging participatory democracy and promoting positive engagement of the civil society and the population itself, as an answer to the aspirations from the grassroots. Through participatory democracy, the Timorese people are expected to give meaning to freedom and become more responsible to transform their daily problems into solutions. Participatory democracy will become an invigorating reality for the people and stimulate new energy for the holistic development of the nation.

Democracy should be experienced daily by the people, in solving their problems, in the implementation of their own programs and the revitalisation of their own capacities to think and to act. Once every Timorese is fully aware that bringing solution to each problem means enjoying more citizenship, means increasing experiences which enable every Timorese to participate in the reconstruction of Timor-Leste, we would have established a collective responsibility, in terms of duties and rights. This will form widespread chains of relationships which strengthen solidarity, co-ordination and co-operation.

The foundation of ‘nationhood’ is only created when there is genuine participation arising from the communities towards their own development. As such, community building is the fundamental factor to the reconstruction of Timor-Leste.

The demand for the participation of all the Timorese people in the reconstruction of the country is imperative in terms of making the Timorese people more responsible for their own future and that of the coming generations. As I mentioned before, the participation of the People of Timor-Leste is to affirm and to acknowledge their freedom.

The demand for active participation in all aspects of the reconstruction of Timor-Leste is intended for the development of every Timorese man and woman; it is intended to uphold the identity, the freedom, dignity and integrity of the Timorese people. Our main target is the development of man and woman of Timor-Leste.

Ladies and Gentlemen

The great challenge that we have now and in the future is how to conciliate the existence of severe poverty and the lack of human resources with the demands of the economic development. Nevertheless, the lack of qualified human resources will not hinder nor discourage our enthusiasm and our strong will to overcome our difficulties in the process of our nation building.

Nation building encompasses a range of factors, which dictate the course of development in the various aspects of the life of a nation, among others, economic, social and cultural. It is a dynamic process strictly associated with space, time and the predominant culture in a due time. Within this line of thinking, there is a demanding need to be more careful on how we assess the reality of Timor-Leste with objectivity. It is a reasonable complex reality in that it encompasses the interaction of numerous factors that contribute to the social, political and economical climate of the country.

The fact that we live in a globalisation era should not mean that we have to follow similar action patterns to attain the right to say that we are walking towards the same end. The reconstruction of Timor-Leste occurs in a space, time and cultural environment that differ from other countries of post-conflict experiences.

Reality in, or of, Timor-Leste suggests that we should adopt a different approach. The reason for this is that although this global combat against poverty share some of the indicators common to all developing or underdeveloped countries, there is a demanding need in each country to be familiar with and learn to tackle problems which are very much its own.

Our people have already expressed their vision for 2020; an ambitious but tenacious vision for it was idealised in terms of improving living standards. It has an exceptional value in that it expresses the desire of parents to change the future of their children moving away from the current range of insecurity that they still face today.

The concept of poverty reduction which is always on the tip of our tongues, has almost become the duty of every citizen at national and international level and, all the more so when the Millennium Development Goals are its guiding light.

Timor-Leste is an agricultural country with potential to become self-sufficient. Today, the majority of the people still practice subsistence agriculture with extremely rudimentary means of production. Given that, there are no mechanisms established for the purchase, processing and distribution of products, villagers try to produce for their own subsistence as, in the broad sense, they overcome the need to purchase what they produce, even though it is insufficient for their annual consumption need.

We now urgently need a phased programme to be able to guide towards self-sufficiency in basic agricultural commodities in five to ten years. The development of this economic sector would avoid the current non-sustainable situation of importing food products, which could be produced locally. The people complain that their products are either not sold or are sold at ridiculous prices. This prevents most of the population from having the purchasing power to buy other commodities or the cash to pay the primary school fee of fifty cents monthly per child.

There is a need for a plan of action, focussed towards agriculture based on greater diversity and quantity of production and, focussed on encouraging small and medium industries, to be the basis of Timorese economy.

One proposal could be the allocation of funds for agro-industry. There should be funds allocated for the purchase, storing, processing and distribution of agricultural products namely rice, corn and beans not only to guarantee some price stability but also to assist affected areas. This mechanism, so needed under the present circumstances, would motivate farmers to produce more and better, rather than limiting themselves to self-consumption of their production, as they could not envisage their sale. If this is to be possible, then, when such a mechanism is well implemented or simultaneous to its implementation, the private sector would gradually take on this undertaking and the State would release itself totally, or partially, from this task of assisting the population.

In addition to generating this motivation in the agricultural sector, it is necessary to advance the small and medium-sized industry in food processing and the production of building materials and agricultural tools and equipment in an effort to create permanent and sustainable employment and thus avoid further imports.

Much is said on the need for foreign investment and the increasing concern to create jobs given the lack of employment for the youth. The lack of vocational skills amongst our youth is one of the crucial problems. This is easier to solve as long as the investment made is implemented alongside a vocational training programme tailored to the work the youth is employed to perform. This is also to be taken into account in the multi-annual plans of the education sector, in particular the vocational training schools, according to the labour force needs of the country.

Potentially one can say that there is an array of opportunities: from fisheries to tourism, in the agricultural field itself, in the building of infrastructure, and so forth. The development of any of these sectors depends also on the development of other sectors. The development of tourism, for example, depends on the development of health care system, security, means of communication, food production, etc.

Right this moment, we are still in a phase of being assisted by the international community but we will do our best and, hopefully, in the medium term, co-operation with our development partners can reach its full meaning.

Ladies and Gentlemen

UNIDO’s experience has been important in many countries, and this we all congratulate.

Timor-Leste was a success case, under the UN Administration, headed by our dear friend, the late Dr. Sergio Vieira de Mello.

In order to develop Timor-Leste, we still have a long way to go.

It is said that there can be no development without democracy. But if we continue to live under the poverty line, then democracy will fail.

In addition to the principles of good governance, to which we are committed, we need to have a tenacious policy to combat corruption, a policy on transparency and accountability: the major challenge is how to secure this process through peace and social justice. Only this way, can we give value to the sacrifices of our people.

Another challenge is how we deal with the process for sustainable development. There is a pressing need to encourage the private sector, which is still in the embryonic stage in Timor-Leste. The private sector has to be the important component for the economic and social development of the country.

In Timor-Leste, UNIDO would have something new to create and can increase success in diverse parts of the world.

In this era of globalisation, the private sector can become a spectrum for small and poor countries (and Timor-Leste is the poorest in Southeast Asia and one of the ten poorest in the world) in how to respond to the pressures of the international market.

The challenge now for Timor-Leste is the challenge that we believe UNIDO accepted to share with the Timorese.

Thank you very much.

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